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Defending The Guilty, Barbara Allen Babcock

Cleveland State Law Review

How can you defend a person you know is guilty? I have answered that question hundreds of times, never to my inquirer's satisfaction, and therefore never to my own. In recent years, I have more or less given up, abandoning the high-flown explanations of my youth, and resorting to a rather peevish: "Well, it's not for everybody. Criminal defense work takes a peculiar mind-set, heart-set, soul-set." While I still believe this, the mind-set might at least be more accessible through a better effort at explanation. First we will examine the nature of the question, then the possible answers. We must …